Tuesday, May 29, 2007

The Iraqis have a tendency to act in ways contrary to what much of the rest of the world wishes. Certainly Bush and the Neocons would have preferred the Iraqis make a more orderly transition into the post-Saddam era. On the other hand, the US Democratic Party--banking on a triumphant march to the White House in 2008--cannot help but wish the very worst for Iraq and its people. They have built their political ambitions upon the utter defeat of Bush. If the Iraqis succeed, with Bush given even a small portion of the credit, the US Democratic Party can forget about the White House for four more years.

The tribal leaders I have spoken with, like General Sadoon, were sympathetic to al Qaeda until recently because they saw al Qaeda as a hedge against the Shia and the Persians and because they opposed the U.S. occupation.

"They said it was jihad," Sadoon said, "but this is not jihad. These men are butchers and thieves."

After seeing that al Qaeda had nothing to offer but death, violence, extortion and Sharia courts, they flipped to the coalition.

...Each area of operation is different. Khalidiyah is only 35 kilometers from Kharma and Kharma is only 33 kilometers from West Rasheed, Baghdad, but they are nothing alike.

Anyone who says they can speak with definitive knowledge about all of Iraq is a fool or a liar or both.

A person with definitive knowledge of Iraq would have to discuss the situation in terms of 4 or more general areas of operation and then break those down even more to Battalion by Battalion areas.

But even if a person was to circulate to every battalion in Iraq, by they time he finished, the situation would have changed at the battalions he visited first.

This is the nature of warfare. But many members of Congress think after a five-day-junket and a few power point presentations they can make sweeping pronouncements that they understand Iraq.

But I was not referring to just the Bush-haters in the US and the western world. If Iraq finds any little bit of peace and modernity, Bush will be hated to the ends of the earth by the Wahabis, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, and every other violent and bigoted organisation promoting bloodletting in the service of global jihad and islamic supremacy.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

While a lot of people who apparently don't get out a lot railed and screeched over Abu Ghraib's famed "panties on the head" abuse of prisoners, very few of these pseudo-intellectuals can be bothered to comment about the genuine bloody torture that is occurring on the battlefield of the Long War.

In a recent raid on an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, U.S. military officials recovered an assortment of crude drawings depicting torture methods like “blowtorch to the skin” and “eye removal.” Along with the images, which you’ll find on the following pages, soldiers seized various torture implements, like meat cleavers, whips, and wire cutters.

What? No humiliating body searches by women or the disrepectful handling of Korans?

Silence on Torture: Silence is complicity, you know. (Instapundit)

For somebody who loves torture stories to death, there’s lots of silence about this from Andrew Sullivan who’s busy slamming Catholics, sniffing out homophobia, rooting about with Ron Paul and showing the view from somebody’s window. It’s just work, work, work, for Andrew.

“Given the media’s fascination with what American soldiers were doing at Abu Ghraib, is it safe to assume that the same level of attention will be given to what our enemy is doing? Or, would that be too much like journalism?” (Newsbusters)

The media, and the less bright bloggers, appear to be fixated on the exaggeration of the sins of coalition forces, and completely blind to the actual horror that is being faced by the western world. These self-lobotomised bloggers and journalists were all over Abu Ghraib, but since looking at the real threats to civilisation might upset some of their "readers," they choose to ignore the real problems.

So what does this mean? It means that recruiting is strong for the branches of our military that see the most action in Iraq (Army and Marine active duty), and gets only slightly weaker for those branches where a troop is less likely to see action (Army NG and then on down through the Navy/Air Force reserves). Which means that of the people choosing to sign up for the military, most of them are signing up with an inclination toward going to Iraq.

Sort of throws a monkey wrench in that whole “Bush’s unpopular war” line when the military has such little trouble finding citizens willing to risk their lives for it, doesn’t it?

The US has a volunteer military. The closer a particular branch of the military is to combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, the easier it is for that branch to recruit members.

There is no government like Iran's holy mullahs. The Iranian government believes that Allah created nuclear weapons to be used--by Allah!! And if Allah chooses to let his servants do the dirty work, then, by Allah! the mullahs of Iran stand ready to do whatever it takes. One thing stands in the way--the pesky Bush and his Army, parked in Iraq. So if you value the progressive theocracy in Iran, and everything it stands for--tell Bush to get the fuck out of Iraq!!!

Al Qaeda is not our only enemy in Iraq, however. Iran has chosen to fight a proxy war against us there, determined to work our defeat for its own purposes. Iranian weapons and even advisers flow into Iraq and assist our enemies, both Sunni and Shia, to kill our soldiers and attempt to establish control over Iraq itself. This Iranian support is not the result of a misunderstanding that could be worked out if only we would talk to the mullahs. It is the continuation of nearly three decades of cold war between Iran and the United States that began in 1979 with an Iranian attack on the sovereign American soil of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The states of the Arabian Gulf are watching closely to see who will win. If Iran succeeds in driving America from Iraq, Iranian hegemony in the region is likely. If that success is combined with the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon, then Iranian hegemony is even more likely. Dominance of the Middle East by this Iranian regime would be very bad for America. And a nuclear arms race in which Arab states tried to balance against Iranian power would also be very bad for America.

The funny thing is, western leftists, college professors, and feminists are lining up to defend Iran's mullahs and mad dog Ahmadinejad, while foaming in the mouth in hatred at Bush. That shows that the mainstream media has done its job well, because otherwise the popular backlash against these pseudo-intellectual circular jerkulators would be frightening.

But the media--who almost never leave their hotel rooms and hotel barrooms in Iraq, have gotten together and decided to tell a story about Iraq that most of the coalition service members who have actually been to Iraq (not hiding under their beds like the "journalists" do) say is not true.

Gotta love the people who join the popular chorus without understanding who is pulling their strings and waving their baton.

If you love Iranian mullahs, and Iranian power--you've gotta tell Bush to bring the troops home--even if they volunteered to do exactly what they're doing.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Passion for political causes is cheap, if one makes his living via his passion (eg Al Sharpton, David Duke, Al Gore, etc.). When it comes to the anti-war movement, the same rule applies. Because when deciding whether a war is better than the alternative, one has to override passion long enough to rationally understand what the alternative to a war is. Only a victim of faulty brain function fails to understand that the alternative to a particular war is not always peace.

The terrorists are encouraged by the reports of American politicians seeking to have U.S. troops withdrawn. Most Iraqi Sunni Arabs see that as a disaster, but the terrorists see it as an opportunity to take on the security forces without having to worry about the much more capable American forces. But with U.S. troops gone, the Iraqi security forces will be inclined to wage war the traditional way. That means massive use of firepower against civilians in any neighborhood where the Sunni Arab terrorists show up, or are found.

....So far this year, many more parts of central Iraq have been cleared of terrorists, and the remaining ones know they have to maintain their visibility to survive. Setting off several bombs a day keeps the terrorists in the news, even if the explosions take place in a smaller and smaller area of Iraq. The terrorists play more to the international media, than they do to anyone inside Iraq. The terrorists are already hated and feared throughout the country, even in Sunni Arab areas. There, the terrorists must increasingly divert resources to terrorize Sunni Arabs, and keep them in line. They are aided by Islamic conservatives, who see all the unrest as an opportunity to impose Taliban like rules on the population. If the terrorists accomplish nothing else, they will have shown how to manipulate the mass media, and divert attention from the true origins of the terrorists, and their objectives. It's been a masterful job which, of course, the mass media will have no interest in examining anytime soon. In a generation or so, there will be books and articles about it, but the subject will never get a lot of media attention.

The current battles between Russia and Estonia (concerning the reburial of Soviet soldiers' remains) have much wider significance than just being one more spat between Russia and its former vassals.

The roots of this clash go much deeper than the gas wars against Ukraine (and then Belarus), than the war of wines against Georgia, and deeper even than Russia's struggle against the deployment of US missile defence elements in Eastern Europe.

The fundamental cause of this conflict lies in the main unsolved issue of modern Russia: the denial by the Kremlin, and by President Vladimir Putin, of the Soviet regime's criminal nature.

Not only was the Soviet Union a criminal state, it was a hopelessly failed criminal state. The fact that Putin and his cronies seem to want to re-live the "glory days" of the USSR, suggests that they have learned nothing from the past.

If that is true, it may be necessary to pull out a page from over a generation ago, and begin to play China against Russia once again. Given the huge problem that Russia has with Chinese immigration to Eastern Siberia, that may not be too difficult.

Rosie O'Donnell is not the only nitwit to espouse 9-11 conspiracy theories publicly. In fact, there are apparently more than 800,000 web pages devoted to the deluded imaginings and wishful thinking of the lunatic left mainstream.

Increasingly, such beliefs are migrating from the fringes and into the mainstream. French author Thierry Meyssan’s The Big Lie, which argues that the U.S. military used one of its own guided missiles to attack the Pentagon, was a bestseller in France, and his claims have been widely repeated in European and Middle Eastern media. When Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wrote to President George W. Bush in May 2006, his rambling missive included broad hints that the American government was involved in organizing the attacks. Allegations of American complicity in 9/11 have become standard fare on talk radio, and among both radical left- and radical right-wing groups. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat from Georgia, has held a Capitol Hill hearing on the topic. Celebrities have gotten into the act as well. “Why did Bush knock down the towers?” rapper Jadakiss asked in his 2004 hit “Why?” And, in an interview with conspiracy-oriented talk-show host Alex Jones, actor Charlie Sheen embraced a variety of popular conspiracy theories.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York was fond of saying. “He is not entitled to his own facts.” Sooner or later, even the wildest 9/11 theories rely on factual claims. And facts can be checked.

Popular Mechanics became involved in investigating 9/11 conspiracy theories in the fall of 2004, after an advertisement ran in the New York Times for the book Painful Questions by Eric Hufschmid, demanding that the 9/11 investigation be reopened. Hufschmid’s book includes a number of tangible claims regarding 9/11. It states, for example, that because jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, the fires in the World Trade Center towers could not have caused their collapse. And it claims ample evidence exists to show that demolition-style explosives were prepositioned in the buildings.

As editors of a magazine devoted to science and technology, we saw these claims as significant. Was there hard evidence to support them? And, if so, what would be the implications for our understanding of 9/11? At the very least, we thought, someone should look into these allegations. If there were even a hint of truth to these or similar claims, then the conspiracy theorists had a point: There should be a deeper investigation.

....The magazine assembled a team of reporters and researchers and methodically began to analyze the most common factual claims made by conspiracy theorists--assertions that are at the root of the majority of 9/11 alternative scenarios. We interviewed scores of engineers, aviation experts, military officials, eyewitnesses, and members of the investigative teams--more than 300 sources in all. We pored over photography, maps, blueprints, aviation logs, and transcripts. The results of our research appeared in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics. That cover story, “9/11: Debunking the Myths,” provoked a strong reaction on the internet and in the mainstream media. The online version of the article remains the most frequently read story on www.popularmechanics.com and has been printed out more than 850,000 times.

As someone with limited time to waste, I have not spent very much time looking at theories that were clearly dreamed up by people several cards short of a full deck. Nevertheless, since the leftist mainstream is composed largely of academically lobotomised, psychological neotenates with pathological narcissism, such theories find a ready audience there.

When a person's personal and political ideology is comprised largely of hate and anger, he becomes an easy target for such poorly reasoned treatises which try to deny a worldwide problem of surplus jihad-aged muslim males trained to kill for religion, and lay all the world's problems at the feet of the hated US government.

No wonder Al Gore is doing so well with his little propaganda film. It all fits, if you focus your hatred clearly enough on the chosen scapegoat.

Monday, May 14, 2007

From al qaida's number 2 man (probably #1 man still alive) comes a recent video where Zawahiri sarcastically regrets that the US will probably slink away from Iraq before al qaida has a chance to give the US forces a "really good whipping." By a good whipping, Zawahiri means killing at least 200,000 to 300,000 US troops.

It reminds me of the good whipping the #1 man of al qaida predicted that he would give the US forces in Afghanistan--presumably something on the scale of another Vietnam. Al Qaida and the other arab jihadists and supremacists have never lacked for boastful rhetoric, in any conceivable situation. Remember "the mother of all battles?" The arab supremacist who predicted that ominous condition for US forces was reportedly "well-hung," and not in the genital sense.

Of course, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi feel that the nation of Iraq should change its name to Vietnam, to reflect the enormous US losses that have occurred, to date, in the tri-partite middle eastern nation. Political speculator George Soros apparently feels the same way, and is not above spreading his money around liberally to attempt to cause as many US voters agree with him as possible.

There are many significant differences between the low level war in Iraq, and the much higher level war that was fought in Vietnam. But the most significant one in my opinion, is that any threat from spreading communism in Southeast Asia was not deduced from a major terror attack on US soil. The threat from spreading jihadism is quite real, and was revealed by multiple attacks on both US soil and on US military and diplomatic assets overseas.

The concomitant demographic in Europe, Russia, Africa, South Asia, promise to provide a fertile growing field for future jihadis. In other words, what is seen in south Lebanon and Palestine, were only previews of coming attractions for the currently non-muslim parts of the world where muslims were procreating much faster than non-muslims.

In my opinion, the best reason for the US military to be in Iraq, is to learn to fight jihadis. Because what is happening in Gaza today, will be happening in Paris and London tomorrow, as muslim populations grow. Given that the US military is the only effective military in the western world, the very least it could do to prepare for the real and growing clash of civilisations, is to learn to fight this war--not Vietnam.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Strategy Page blog often provides a useful insight or two into the underlying realities of conflict in various parts of the world.

The Saudis are not happy with the links between terrorists inside Saudi Arabia, and Iraqi Sunni Arabs. The Saudis have told the Iraqi Sunni Arabs that the Sunni Arab nations in the regions will not bail them out, and that they must make peace with the Shia Arab majority. Many Sunni Arabs, throughout the region, do not agree with this. But they are a small minority. Most Sunni Arabs are appalled at the body count the Sunni Arab terrorists have created in Iraq. While most of the dead are Shia Arabs, a growing number are Sunni Arabs, killed either by the suicide bombers, or by Shia Arab death squads looking for revenge. While most Sunni Arabs would like to see Sunni Arabs running Iraq, there was revulsion at Saddam Husseins methods, and even greater distaste for the subsequent mayhem by his followers.

Saudi investigators also discovered that there were also terrorist training camps in northern Yemen, an area controlled by Shia Arab tribes that are hostile to the Sunni Arab Yemeni government. The connection with both Syria and Yemen is Iran, which subsidizes Syria, and supports the Shia tribes in Yemen. Saudi Arabia sees Iran has its primary enemy, not the Shia form of Islam (which most Iranians, who are not Arabs, and most Iraqis, who are, follow). The Iranians take advantage of the fact that al Qaeda has become the place to go if you believe in a very conservative version of Islam, and are certain that the sorry state of the Moslem world is all due to a plot by evil infidels (non-Moslems, especially Christians, Hindus and Jews) to destroy Islam. Even though al Qaeda considers Shia Moslems to be heretics, and worthy of persecution and execution, the Iranians are willing to cooperate if it will lead to problems for the Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia. Politics, ethnic antagonisms and religious beliefs produce a strange brew in the Middle East.

If the US stays in Iraq--a key middle east location, geostrategically--long enough to prevent outright war between Iran and the Sunni states, it may be possible for the hotbed of violence and terrorism to settle substantially. Many uninformed folks blame George Bush for the violence and terror in the mideast. Sometimes they do this from ignorance, and sometimes from disingenuous animosity. Either way, it makes them superfluous, at best, to the real problems that are occurring.

Thursday, May 10, 2007

While "cut and run" legislators proudly boast of their cowardice and lack of global savvy, the ever-strengthening US military has a slightly different point of view:

“We try to maintain contact with the enemy as long as possible and kill as many as we can,” Gant said. “We were going to do some serious damage that day.

“It is easy to sit in a room in safety and talk about it,” he said. “I came here to fight. I came here to kill the enemy. I knew at the time what a huge engagement it was... I also had a huge concern for my team and my Iraqis, because I love these guys. I wanted to ensure that we didn’t take unnecessary risks or have unnecessary casualties.”

He decided that he needed to get the insurgents out of their well-built positions. It was obvious to him that this complex attack was well planned. They mounted up and started to move again toward Baghdad still taking fire from both sides.

Many bloggers share the ignorance of global dynamics with the cut and run legislators and journalists, who constitute the "squeakiest wheel" in domestic US chatter. Some of them are fairly informed and careful in other areas of their blogging. It is difficult to blame them too much for not being as informed and clearheaded as those of us better positioned to see more of the factors in play.

The world has not forgotten America's abandonment of the South Vietnamese and later the Kurds, and our allies must now fear that another abandonment is in the offing. One reason the United States is short on friends throughout the world is that we haven't stood by our allies in the past. The consequence of another hasty retreat must be considered: our reputation will suffer and those who aligned with us in Iraq will pay a heavy price.

The debate over withdrawal comes as America's allies are making important progress. The media has finally begun to notice the Anbar Salvation Front, a collection of Sunni tribesmen, Iraqi nationalists, ex-Baathists, and others who are united by the common goal of driving al Qaeda from their country. Based in the Anbar province, which was long an al Qaeda stronghold, the Anbar Salvation Front is led by Abdul Sattar al-Rishawi, a charismatic tribal leader who has seen many of his family members killed by al Qaeda.

The Anbar Salvation Front provides an Iraqi-based opposition to al Qaeda, and one with local legitimacy. The Front has already yielded four distinct advantages.

First, it has started to provide stability on the ground through emergency response units (ERUs) that serve a policing function. Already, four ERUs consisting of 750 men apiece are operational, and there are enough volunteers to fill out six more--a total of 7,500 men. Although there are conflicting accounts as to how much training ERU personnel will have, high-ranking intelligence sources believe the Anbar Salvation Front is attempting to avoid past blunders in which unprepared police lost public confidence through massive human rights abuses.

Second, the Front has developed an intelligence network that gives U.S. forces unprecedented access to information about insurgent activities. In the past, Sunnis who wanted to report insurgent activity would have to tell U.S. troops directly--and the consequences of being seen with American soldiers can be fatal. Sunnis won't be killed for meeting with Anbar Salvation Front members, who have provided a means for vital information to reach the Americans.

Third, the Anbar Salvation Front has been able to mount a theological challenge to the clerics who have issued rulings in support of al Qaeda's Iraqi jihad. In early April, a committee of 40 prominent religious scholars met in Amman, Jordan to establish the "council of ulema of Iraq." This council hopes to undercut the theological legitimacy that al Qaeda in Iraq claims. Its rulings are designed to undermine those issued by clerics who favor al Qaeda's activities, such as the November 2004 edict issued by a group of Saudi Arabian scholars that lent legitimacy to the jihad in Iraq.

Finally, the Front's activities are extending beyond the Anbar province, as al-Rishawi is forming a national political party known as Iraq Awakening. In April, more than 200 Sunni sheikhs met in Anbar to form this party, which opposes al Qaeda and plans to cooperate with the government in Baghdad. Iraq Awakening will run a slate of candidates in Anbar's upcoming provincial elections and in the next parliamentary balloting in 2009.

Too many of these loud but uninformed bloggers take a "hands waving wildly in the air in an expression of mindless abandon" attitude toward what is happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts of the Islamic terror war. Many others who take a more intelligent approach to seeking information, seek out news sources closer to the reality.

Diyala has become the main hub of al Qaeda's operations. Al Qaeda in Iraq made Baqubah the capital of its rump Islamic State of Iraq. Since the inception of the Baghdad Security Plan in mid-February, the security situation, which was deteriorating after U.S. forces pulled back last fall, has markedly worsened. Al Qaeda has prepared fighting positions, supply bases, IED traps, bomb rigged buildings, and training camps in the province.

Over 2,000 hardened al Qaeda fighters fled Baghdad and are operating in Diyala. An American intelligence official and a U.S. military officer informs us that al Qaeda is operating along the lines of Hezbollah's military structure in Lebanon. Recent al Qaeda attacks in the region bear this out. Al Qaeda is organized in small military units with infantry, mortars, anti-tank and anti-aircraft teams, as well as suicide and IED cells and the accompanying logistical nodes. Al Qaeda has been conducting a terror campaign to remove tribal leaders and others who oppose them, while waging a campaign of intimidation designed to cower the local population.

The U.S. and Iraqi security forces have preparing the battlefield in Diyala until the full compliment of U.S. forces are in theater and able to finish securing the Baghdad "belts" - the regions surrounding Baghdad. The Diyala Campaign is only is its opening phase, with U.S. and Iraqi forces conducting raids, search and destroy missions, establishing forward operating bases and logistic nodes in preparation for the full assault sometime early this summer. The establishment of the yet to be named Diyala Salvation Front is a crucial element to establishing local intelligence networks and an auxiliary force to hunt al Qaeda.

Even with the best of information, without the necessary cognitive experience and apparatus to process the information, most people are lost--particularly when so much disinformation is coming from the news media and politicians.

While the cut and run critics of the war to sustain western civilisation against the neo-barbarians sleep at night, smug in their self-righteousness, the warriors who fight their battles for them--making sure they have the freedom and security to criticise their defenders--are often going with little sleep and less than appetizing food. But these warriors are far from breaking, as the critics like to claim. In fact, they are steaming mad at the media for misrepresenting their reality. And they are coming back angry and motivated to settle some scores on the homefront.

Many of them will take their domestic battles into the workplace, the academy, the government, and--yes--the media. That returning warriors will take their battle to the blogosphere goes without saying, since that is already happening.

I can only hope that the cut and run types do not succeed in cutting all of our throats, which in fact is what they are unwittingly trying to do.

"We're at the point in the curve where small groups can fight nation states, and acquit themselves pretty well. The trend will move closer and closer to the individual, to the point where one man can potentially declare war against the world, and win."

....Loose nukes, for example, may cause isolated catastrophes, but "there's no way small groups or individuals can replicate the huge manufacturing base and expertise requirements for a meaningful nuclear program."

More of a threat, says Robb, will be biological attacks. "That knowledge is more ubiquitous, and the tools for manipulating it are undergoing the same process as Moore's Law -- it's highly informational in character, and lends itself to computing power. You'll probably see the tinkering and replication that allow the development of weapons."

Another area of concern: attacks on infrastructure, like the recently-foiled plot to destroy Saudi oil fields. "I don't think attacks are coming directly to our shores as quickly as people fear," he says. "I think most attacks will be on systems, from a distance. Al Qaeda is focused on systems disruptions." But much-predicted efforts to cripple Internet may be less likely, because of its resilient nature and because the terrorists need it themselves.

....What can we do? Technology is a key template. "We need more resilience at the community level," says Robb. "Backup systems and alternative sources of supply. A bird flu epidemic could mean six months with nobody in the office -- are you set up for that kind of remote work?"

His advice: simplify and plan to route around problems. "We focus on economies of scale and reward specialization, but there's not a control system complex enough to manage the whole global system. You can dampen the shocks by simplifying your processes and planning to switch around as needed."

More centralization of government power is a road to ruin, he says. "We need a more resilient approach, that allows for more community participation in security, and more connectivity." Special ops forces, cooperation, and rapid response to threats are all critical as well.

This suggests that community-level defenses against mass-casualty terrorism is not only important---it is absolutely vital. Any governor or mayor that does not make local defense against terrorism an important part of his campaign should be shunned and rejected harshly. The local incompetence seen in Louisiana and New Orleans during the Katrina aftermath should no longer be acceptable to the intelligent voter. It is time to throw the bums out on the street and elect people who care more about the defense of the people than lining their own pockets from tax money.

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Perhaps you have heard of a horrifying crime that occurred in Wichita, Kansas, in December of 2000. The crime has been labeled "The Wichita Massacre," but the horrific details of the crime must be read to be believed.

Most of you will have never heard of this crime. The level of hatred toward the victims revealed by the methods of the perpetrators, is reminiscent of primitive tribal genocide of Palestinians against Israelis, or actions of other violent third world tribes and clans.

But these crimes were committed by the Carr brothers, seen below, against total strangers, in a small city located in a US state that is known for its strong abolitionist views prior to the US civil war. What was the motive???I have given this Kansas atrocity some thought, and felt that it was an aberration within developed countries such as the US. So it came as a great shock to me to hear about a fairly recent similar crime committed in the small US city of Knoxville, Tennessee.The rather average looking couple pictured above were described by family members as a “clean-cut and faithful couple—good kids.” What happened to them was not at all average, and not the least bit expected.

The group of five defendants pictured below reveals nothing in their snapshots to suggest the viciousness that was unleashed upon the above couple, out of the blue.

What was their motive? Again, such violence may be commonplace in third world vendettas, and organised crime vendettas. But these crimes had nothing at all to do with such "rational" mindless violence. No, these were total strangers who were chosen for this debased and inhuman violence.Actually, the most outrageous thing about these crimes is the conspiracy of silence by the US national press, not to report what had happened.

The entire world knows what happened to James Byrd and Matthew Shepherd. News coverage of these vicious crimes was exhaustive and unrelenting for years, and are still frequently referred to by civil rights and gay rights activists.

One may be excused for believing that a high level of black on white violent crime does not exist in the US, or that blacks are more frequently the victims of interracial crime than whites. Such is hardly the case--although the US media appears to be united in avoiding an exposure of the true magnitude and asymmetry of interracial crime.

But it is not the magnitude of black on white violent crime that worries me the most. It is not even the silence of the media when it should be confronting this urgent and divisive problem that causes me the most unease. No, the thing that worries me the most is something quite obvious, but never stated. I will let you think about it for a while.

The AKP has thrown Turkey open to foreign investment. Last year almost $20 billion rolled in, twice the amount of the previous year. It has deregulated the economy; since the AKP took power, it has grown by a third. It has tamed inflation, stabilized the currency and presided over a jump in per-capita income from $2,598 in 2002 to $5,477 today. The state sector, controlled by the secular bureaucracy, has been reduced. Margaret Thatcher would not have disapproved.

The AKP was in fact elected in large part because previous secular governments had for so long, and so badly, mismanaged the economy -- before the last election, a huge banking scandal wiped out Turkish savings and sparked a complete economic collapse.

A casual observer might also expect that because the Turkish protesters are enemies of Islamic extremism, they are friends of the United States. Not so. The secularists here are if anything more hostile to the West than the AKP. (They are often just as anti-Semitic, too.) Many secularist legislators voted in 2003 to deny U.S. forces the right to pass through Turkey on their way to invade Iraq. At the recent rallies in Ankara and Istanbul, protesters held up signs denouncing "ABD-ullah Gul." This is an anti-American pun: The letters "ABD" stand for "USA" in Turkish. U.S. camera crews were abused with chants of "Go home, CIA spies." One particularly lunatic nationalist, Ergun Poyraz, has just published a book claiming that Erdogan is really an undercover Jew who is collaborating with the Mossad to destroy Turkish secularism.

Finally, it is the AKP, not the secular establishment, that is plumping for Turkey's entry into the European Union. The nationalists fear that the union will interfere with their war against Turkey's restive Kurdish separatists. The European Commission has issued a stern warning to the Turkish military: Stay out of politics or it will hurt your E.U. bid. Some threat. If you don't stop eating that ice cream, you won't get any spinach.

So it seems that domestic Turkish politics may be as complex as politics in many European countries. The secularists may be the biggest military threat to the region, while the islamists may be the most likely to tone down the regional belligerence of the Ottoman.

Turks are certainly not arabs--not as typically tradition-bound and tribally reflexive in thinking and action. But Turks are divided, and cannot be seen through traditional European lenses. The best course is simply to observe, and to encourage any signs of economic and cultural liberalisation.

This has become something of a scandal in the Islamic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Their girls and women are stripping for strangers over the internet, to obtain an admiration and acknowledgement that they are denied in their daily life. It is one thing for this type of decadent behaviour to be performed by infidels--but your own wife or child?

The video does not reveal whether religious clerics are calling for these females to be killed or mutilated for their internet activities.

When women are treated as cattle--as property--one cannot expect them to do otherwise than to escape in any way that they can.

There are many different ways to interpret Islam. The Wahabis of KSA have chosen one of the most oppressive interpretations, creating a nation-sized prison in the process. The young men can go off and become martyrs for their aging and evil religious puppetmasters back home. Meanwhile, back in the desert villages, the pampered imams secretly watch young arab women stripping for the camera.

Latin American Idiots have traditionally identified themselves with caudillos, those larger-than-life authoritarian figures who have dominated the region’s politics, ranting against foreign influence and republican institutions. Two leaders in particular inspire today’s Idiot: President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and President Evo Morales of Bolivia. Chávez is seen as the perfect successor to Cuba’s Fidel Castro (whom the Idiot also admires): He came to power through the ballot box, which exonerates him from the need to justify armed struggle, and he has abundant oil, which means he can put his money where his mouth is when it comes to championing social causes. The Idiot also credits Chávez with the most progressive policy of all—putting the military, that paradigm of oligarchic rule, to work on social programs.

For his part, Bolivia’s Evo Morales has indigenista appeal. In the eyes of the Idiot, the former coca farmer is the reincarnation of Túpac Katari, an 18th-century Aymara rebel who, before his execution by Spanish colonial authorities, vowed, “I shall return and I shall be millions.” They believe Morales when he professes to speak for the indigenous masses, from southern Mexico to the Andes, who seek redress of the exploitation inflicted on them by 300 years of colonial rule and 200 more of oligarchic republican rule.

The Idiot’s worldview, in turn, finds an echo among distinguished intellectuals in Europe and the United States. These pontificators assuage their troubled consciences by espousing exotic causes in developing nations. Their opinions attract fans among First-World youngsters for whom globalization phobia provides the perfect opportunity to find spiritual satisfaction in the populist jeremiad of the Latin American Idiot against the wicked West.

....The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason.

When the average IQ of a voting population drops so low as to allow shameless and irrational pandering to a voter's bigotry--as in Venezuela and Bolivia--the voters will elect populist tyrants. These tyrants go on to change their constitutions and governments to allow themselves to continue in office for life--like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or Fidel Castro in Cuba. Hugo Chavez is 90% down that road, and Evo Morales appears likely to follow in the identical path downward.

Dysgenic immigration trends and differential birthrates suggest that the same fate awaits every developed western nation eventually, if current trends continue. If a government that enacts egalitarian policies fails to understand the need for investment in innovation, and the need for economic freedom and private ownership and profits, the die is set. Nothing can save such a government that chooses the downward path.

Moronic westerners schedule vacations to Caracas or Havana to witness their pet ideas in action. The smarter ones of those catch on pretty quickly when actually exposed to the strangling atmosphere of such a place. The majority of pseudo-intellectual idiots will never catch on. They will continue eating the vomit of morons such as Marx and Marcuse until they are dead.